Guest Post: 3 Viable Ways to Control the Stress Factors at Your Startup

We all know that building a business can be SUPER STRESSFUL! In this week’s guest post, Yazi Jepson gives us some tips for how make sure it doesn’t all get to be too much, not just for us, but for the employees that we manage. Here’s Yazi:

*****

Startups and small businesses are dynamic, ever-changing work environments where the workload is often expanded and the stakes are high, which creates an environment ripe for interpersonal conflict as employees have to work faster and harder to meet the objectives of the company and their performance metrics.

As a result, job seekers are taking advantage of the health trends related to stress relief. This is why employees have begun demanding work-related stress compensation. And it’s not just in the U.S. In Australia, the number of claims over work-related stress has gone up over the years since 2012.

Despite all of this, managing stress at the workplace is a skill many business owners don’t have. They get caught up in their many other responsibilities and let managing stress as a tool for employee recruitment and retention fly under the radar. That can be a costly oversight, however.

The Impact of Stress on Your Business

If you manage a business, you have probably thought about how stress could hurt your business. Tension, absenteeism, and poor morale are some of the key elements associated with stress. However, understand that there are severe ways the stress could interfere with the performance of your workers. It could cost your business A LOT by increasing your health care costs due to the side-effects of stress such as fatigue, injuries, and headaches as well as severe conditions including substance abuse, heart disease, and insomnia. Keep in mind that stress could also seriously hurt a startup’s ability to retain or attract talent.

While it is impossible to eliminate all stress factors in a startup, small changes could make a lot of difference. As you look for solutions to solve the stress factor, it is vital to protect your business’ reputation as well as finances. To protect your startup, here are a few strategies you could employ to decrease stress and foster productivity:

Employee Empowerment

When employees feel powerless in any organization, they tend to experience stress. Creating a startup that empowers all employees is a winning strategy for dealing with stress. What new ways can you modify structures of each department to empower a team? This should be modified in a way that highlights the roles of each employee. There should be explicit guidelines about the people responsible for decision-making in various activities to reduce ambiguity.

Insurance

Every business has the potential of being hit with stress claims that could burden a company’s finances. The surest way to protect your business from such claims is by owning an worker’s compensation policy. If your startup is not involved with high-risk activities, worker’s compensation is a very inexpensive benefit for a startup. It serves as a motivation to employees and keeps your business running. Workers’ comp also protects you if facing a lawsuit as a result of employees filing a claim for stress at work.

Compensation Structure

Different types of compensation structures can boost productivity but be aware that they may also increase bullying among workers. The structure should motivate employees and not add stress. Compensating workers according to their performance at work can quickly reduce cooperation and lead to unhealthy competition.

There are numerous proactive ways of addressing this. For instance, there could be an introduction of a paid time off policy that includes some days off specifically to relieve stress.

Consider Support Programs

Stress can have major effects on workplace culture and morale. Workers can become distant, unfocused, poor time managers, and even short-fused. No employee wants to feel irrelevant. In such instances, employees are likely to feel stressed. It is vital to acknowledge the efforts of each team member and invest in their professional development. Offering employees remedies for stress communicates genuine care from your end. At the organizational level, there should be a program designed to prevent stress. That involves identifying potential risks and the harms associated with them. Evaluated initiatives should then be put into place to control the risks at the workplace.

Final Thought

Work stress is a trending topic. Compensation over workplace-related stress has soared significantly over the years and workers are making stress-related claims more than ever before. If a business owner happens to be the cause of the stress, then there is bad weather for the startup. Identifying and handling stress issues correctly is the only way a startup can lead the market in the tough times and keep productivity at acceptable levels.

*****

Yazi Jepson is a Sydney-born writer. Currently, she writes content for Carter Capner Law a leading law firm who provides legal services in many areas including personal injury compensation and workplace injuries compensation. Yazi writes content in several areas, primarily in business growth, Startups and career advancement.